


L'anima

by psalloacappella



Series: Equilibrium [16]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Conspiracy, Drama, F/M, Gen, Political Alliances, Team as Family, Thinly-veiled critiques of the Shinobi system oops, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-19 05:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22039195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: Defying him, at a time like this. In her worst moments, or perhaps her best, she is difficult to bend. A habit now ingrained, he rubs a thumb across her cheekbone, a fixation, like it will bind her to the earth and to him.❦The hospital is infiltrated; they face the unknown specter of betrayal.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura & Yamanaka Ino, Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Series: Equilibrium [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/46843
Comments: 2
Kudos: 117





	L'anima

What’s terrifying is how she weighs almost nothing.

She’s in his arms before his senses can sketch the scene, drink in the important details; Ino’s mouth is moving while sounds distort, dripping and askance and underwater. It hits him like a punch in the stomach and there’s the consuming stench of blood washing over him, clinging to the skin like a jacket and he feels someone’s fingers squeezing his arm for attention, strands of pink hair tossed up against his face, reaching and tickling, and _slam—_

“Sasuke, take her and go!”

The blonde comes into focus, and how he wishes he were at his peak and everything worked properly because it’s all over her too, garish and bright and splattered on her coat and she’s pushing him backward, frantically, scrabbling.

“Take her home. Don’t answer the door. Don’t fight anyone.”

Underneath the numb electricity, he finds offense. He’ll ruin anyone he wants if it means protecting those that matter. The words, somehow, don’t materialize. Too slow, he wonders whose blood it all is.

“It’s not hers,” she says, hastily, voice closing on a hiss.

Sakura’s in his arms, sliding in and out of consciousness but he’s supporting all of her weight - and on her too, the red with barely any white remaining, splatters like paint, it’s all too glaring and vulgar to be real.

Shikamaru’s flat affect, a play at sounding detached, after accosting him and he doesn’t even know how he found him, really, but the look in his eyes pained, hiding panic. Telling him to go, swiftly, meet up with Ino and _collect her_. Like an escort mission, like a preeminently important jewel or vanity piece. To take her home and guard, a precious work of art. The only notion that this whole thing was beyond him, that the normal routine and everything was off the rails, something out of sync that in a strange way Sasuke had been expecting, had felt it in the wind, was the man’s imperceptibly shaking hand as he took a long, too long, drag on his cigarette. Holding it firmly in his lips, putting both of his hands on his shoulders and clasping him in a way that was too meaningful to shake off, and he’s saying something about how he’ll hold them off, _go get her,_ conveying a situation gone awry without being able to say it out loud.

Sakura’s sinking, knees giving out, gasping. Breaths sounding hollow, almost whistling. Feeling like feathers—where is her weight?

The living don’t feel like this.

“What are you waiting for, take her and go!” The fear in Ino’s eyes reminds him of Naruto’s, the shifting blues of the ocean. Red speckled across her face, eyes glassy; Sakura finds her feet under her again, tries to stand, slips again but this time her hand yanks on his dark collar and her eyes meet his and they’re terrifying, seafoam-glazed and endlessly tunneling. Inhales sharply, coughing out his name in a sandpaper rasp.

And he’s awake.

Adrenaline, the type he’s sorely missed. Humming, and his body moves in the way it should, the way he’s always been destined to do; one arm is enough to support most of her, limp her along, their shoes loud against the hospital tile and most certainly giving everything away. She’s wheezing, fading fast, and they’re close to getting through the back entrance and errantly, he thinks, the blood all over the floor will affirm what they've done, but that’s not his concern to focus on. The details come back and he’s heard everything Ino said, some part of him did at least.

With a last burst of effort, Sakura shoulders open the door and they stumble into the alley together; she lets out a long, flat moan and he doesn’t know if it’s pain or relief in the air, mingling with his heavy panting. Still, they need to move.

“Hang on,” he snaps, shouldering her weight again, what little there is, he’s discomfited at how she feels, like her soul has left her body and all that remains are wisps of smoke. Tries to speak, and she starts to cough again, a grainy and coarse sound, like glass in her throat. “Sakura, come on, focus!”

It’s a blink, a fizzling instant in time that he’s used to and has missed dearly. Beyond speed, broken into atoms and rearranging and existing in mere particles in the space among the stars. This is power. This is agility. The only indication she’s still there with him in that moment is another shudder and cough, sounds that hardly exist in this poised, slivered second. He remembers with pleasure the first time he saw another person move like this, with this speed and disregard for time and reality and the jealousy, the desire to be able to move as shadows do. The first time he accomplished it—freedom.

 _Slam_ as he brings up his arm against the door. And they’re outside her apartment in the dark and he’s still carrying her but her body’s slipping while he drags her over the threshold. Patting her here and there in reflex, as if he’s dropped pieces of her; she’s solid, here, but still feels like something beyond is pulling her away.

“Sakura.” It feels clumsy on his tongue. She’s coming to in a panic, extricates herself from his arms, swaying, gulping. Shoulders shaking. In the dim room hair prickles on the back of his neck, down his spine, at the sight of the jagged edge of her hair, the sloppy slash of a knife taken to it, and now anger blooms along with the smothering, cold sweat, the come down of adrenaline. He grabs her arm—

She screams, fingers on his wrist in an instant and it would be broken if she wasn’t so hurt, but her grip is weak. Barely standing. And now he hears all the things they were telling him, _she lost him, there was nothing she could have done, people pass away all the time, but it’s who he is, he’s part of the resistance, they’ll ask too many questions._ Sakura would never, likely didn’t know who he was, would never just kill a man cold like this, so how did he get in there, so close, too close, Sasuke wildly piecing together the optics, the situation.

She heaves, saying something hoarse. He reaches for her coat, which is soaked and stained, and she chokes that she’s going to be sick. Blood is settling in her cuticles, eyelids bruised and heavy.

“Upstairs.” It’s a sharp command and, realizing she’s beyond moving of her own volition, supports her weight again. “Tell me what’s going on,” he presses. Head lolls and bounces, eyelids falling closed. Sinking. Feet hitting the stairs like the loose ankles of ragdolls.

But he doesn’t need her to, because he knows. They were able to get to her, around all of those people, in a place for the sick and healing and dying. Yanks the coat off by the sleeves, pushes her hair away from her face. Into the bathroom, sink, splashing cold water on her face _how many hours has she been awake, she hasn’t been home in days_ , and she comes to with an abrupt grasp, reaching out to grasp the hard, cold counter.

“Three days,” she rasps. Now cupping water in her own hands, fingers shaking as she once, twice, thrice rubs her face,

-again-

-again-

-again-

frantic, the repetitive motions of the shell-shocked. A quiet _plat_ as a large drop of blood leaves her hand and lands in the sink, a round bullet of red with fickle, wavering edges. “A mission went badly, so many came back. They were all so hurt.” Dictating a flat message as if in a courtroom, disassociated, groping around as in a dream. In the light, stinging and oversaturated, he watches her reflection in the mirror, purple jewel dull against her wan face.

She sways forward, fingers under the faucet, and she’s digging in, picking at the blood folded, a garish batter, into every crevice of the skin. Her breath is a rattle, body empty save for her skeleton and a desert wind sings through her ribs. Favors her side a little, struggling to stand. Sasuke tries to take things off her, focus her, so she can give him more details because someone needs to figure this out and he knows it’s dirty, it’s underground, it’s homegrown, _it’s our fault,_ but she bats him away, a last-ditch effort at autonomy.

“He’d been there for a while, beaten beyond reason. In and out of nightmares. He really did seem hurt.” Voice detached, echoing in the tiled space. “It’s why I didn’t expect—”

“He attacked you,” Sasuke interrupts. The tone of alighting on the source, seizing the threads.

“It’s happened, but not like this,” she moans, listing to the side again, still rubbing her hands raw. He touches her shoulder, a warning before gingerly reaching around her to unzip her vest from the front; _don’t make sudden moves. “_ So . . . deliberate.”

“You didn’t mean to kill him.” His voice is dark, devoid of empathy, wishing he had been there and murdered him personally. Glowering in the mirror, he sees a tinge of green in her face, highlighting the fetid grey. Sakura doesn’t disabuse him of this, instead presses her hands near her side. Knees knocking against the cabinet, loud and bony cracks, acute tones bouncing across the tiles. “Tried to kill you, goddamn coward—”

_(And your hypocrisy is stunning, absolutely fanciful—)_

“They were coming to question me, they knew about it so fast—”

“It was no accident. They were tipped off.”

She starts to say something, but her voice cracks instead, sliding and careening into a low, mournful note and then—vomit. Bends low over the sink, spine in a crimped, exaggerated curve and clammy fingers clutching the counter, scrabbling and readjusting to stay upright. Face drained of color, still listing to one side like a leaning ship in the wind, a wavering note on the edge of a sob. Sasuke continues to maneuver her inch by inch, a marionette, but it’s when he pulls the vest away from her side that it draws his gaze, starkly vivid in the mirror. The gaping hole. An endless tunnel into her soul, with shades of red fading into purple and glistening black.

“Shit.” His mind starts to tug on too many threads, and they all lead to a darkness he cannot abide, not now. He turns her around to face him.

Her knees give out. Eyes roll up.

“Stay awake,” he orders. Lifts her _she’s so light, there’s nothing left_ , onto the counter. Head falls backward against the mirror, a loud and hollow sound. Some unreal, waking dream: The blood, the clothes everywhere, his total inability to rectify it, his impotence. Brushing her hair out of her face, he leans closer and talks to her in an urgent, quiet voice: “You can’t pass out yet, I can’t heal this stupid wound, Sakura, you have to do it, come on—”

“Oh, you’re annoying,” she laughs in a light, wispy tone. He takes her hand and presses it on her open wound, ignoring her delirium and the familiar phrase sounding distorted in his ears; he would never say it again if she could just do her damn healing thing, he doesn’t know when someone is supposed to come and update them or even if that was established or if they’re on their way to arrest her on some trumped up charge. Presses harder, as if that matters. Her fingers tiny and grey and lifeless becoming swallowed in the red mess; when did blood have such unfathomable depth and richness of color?

“Come on!” Lifts her a little to prop her higher against the mirror—she moans in pain. “You can’t, don’t you dare, Sakura.”

A faint glow, flickering and weak, pulses from her hand as she begins to stem the bleeding, but her eyes seem dead and flat, gazing at something far behind him, a horizon on the other side of reality. Panic claws and snatches at the back of his throat.

He leans his forehead against hers; cold, clammy.

“Hey.” Again with the sharp commands, pulling her focus, knowing she’s likely sliding in and out, back and forth across the line and consciousness, the delicate demarcation line he’s danced over many times, and Death can come for him, but it will not take her through that river, though that dark curtain, over that edge. Cups her face with his hand, thumb on her cheekbone, hard, and he knows it hurts her as he always manages to do, but she has to stay awake.

“You’re mine, Sakura. You’ve always had me. And you will _not_ ,” he snaps, shaking her head a little, crushing his forehead against hers, the tiniest break in his voice, “die in a goddamn bathroom if I can help it.”

Green glow fades from her fingers. He presses his head against her chest, and it gives a little, her body feeling dead and limp, but there it is, the tiniest flutter letting him know she’s still there. Each second lasts years, weak and each one is agonizingly slow, hovering and poised before the beat—

A wisp, a question, chest vibrating beneath him.

Realizing she’s speaking, brushing her hair off her forehead. “What?”

“I love you . . . too.” It’s a whisper, and a weak chuckle escapes with it.

She start to fade again, eyes fluttering, breathing desperately and unable to fill her lungs. Lifting her gently, he tries to move her as little as possible as he sets her on the floor, out of the direct stream that patters up against the tile when he turns the water on, beading up in patterns on the walls.

Her eyelids lift. She starts, startled by the water and change of perspective. She looks to him, kneeling, and drops are beading on him as well, sweeping across his dark sleeve and vest, landing on his hair and all of him, really, as he lowers his chin and looks up into her eyes. Something is in his eyes she can’t place, worry and fury but things she hasn’t seen in years. Head spinning and dizziness blooming in her skull and the floor feels like it’s shifting, an earthquake, as she stares into the past, clinging to that dark rope leading to shadowy memories and fears that pose as nightmares, seeing the panic and fear tugging at the edges of his gaze, the things he saw the first time loved ones were murdered in front of him, and every time they were in danger afterward.

“Sasuke-kun,” she whispers, trying to lift her arm. Stops, winces.

“You have a concussion.” His voice is reaching into that past, tapping into something dangerous.

“It happened fast,” she says in a placating tone, placing her hand against the tender area in her torso. Sealed. He follows her movement; the rigidness and anger in his face is something she can feel, more than she can see, radiating. “It’s fine, I closed it.”

“’Fine.’” It’s a snap, a spit. “None of this is fine. This was a setup, this is, this is—!” and he loses the thread, anger obscuring his words. In that dangerous blankness that he finds himself in often, drowning and blind, mind and the world collapsing in on itself as a sinkhole does, wanting desperately to wrap his hands around something and pull it down with him.

To feel as he does, to be engulfed.

The sound of his hand slamming against the tiled wall is so expected, she simply sighs.

Fingers on his face, she lets them trail along the line of his jaw. They’re grey, freezing. All she feels like doing is closing her eyes just for one second, but now that he’s brought it up he very well could be right; concussion. Brain feeling tossed, bounced around in the insides of her skull. There’s still blood from somewhere, running in rivulets from her chest, arms, head maybe, playing the full arpeggio of shades between red and clear, tints of pinks dancing through the water.

They sit in silence, the only sounds the pattering of the water on his clothes, pinging in a distorted song on the tiles, beading on her face and chest and collarbones. Short, shallow breaths, and every once in a while she gasps and the bones of her sternum bend and expand, the motions of an instrument, stealing the air like it’s not reaching the tiny branches of her lungs. A wobbling sound like she keeps meaning to cry, but there’s just not enough left to do it.

“This has happened before, you know,” she mumbles, head swaying left, right. Trying to stay awake. “Hurt lots of times. You weren’t there.”

She’s always had the uncanny, unvarnished ability to say exactly what ruins him, the awful truth written in paint and brought alive. _Coward._ His instinct is always to avert his eyes, but that’s been his choice for years and it’s a failure in him to choose the same actions over and over again. Bringing his eyes to hers, he swallows hard, once, seeing a strong glint and shine coming back to her gaze. But now her words are sliding again, slurring—

“I’m s-sorry I keep killing people.”

“Stop. You save people.” Defying him, at a time like this. In her worst moments, or perhaps her best, she is difficult to bend. A habit now ingrained, he rubs a thumb across her cheekbone, a fixation, like it will bind her to the earth and to him.

_(You’re not worth saving, you never have been.)_

“When y-you learn how to save them,” she whispers, “you always know how to take them away.”

Searching her eyes, he’s unsure of what she’s not bringing into being. As she lifts her chin a little higher in defiance, glowering, he knows in this moment she’s seen more horror than what’s acceptable. It crushes him. He wonders how early she picked him out, what subtle behaviors gave him away. How many days she was healing him like any other patient, lying in wait for the moment in which he would receive his signal, or slip up, or speed up the plan in that impatient, arrogant way of powerful shinobi.

What was his ultimate undoing? Did they unwrap one another’s plans in the way of reading enemies?

“You didn’t tell anyone else?”

Eyes closed, she groans a little and shifts her weight. Pain winds itself into her expression, weaving into her eyebrows and clenched jaw.

“Ino was the only one. If everyone was on guard for him, he’d easily know. They had signals for others, Sasuke.”

“He should have been in prison.”

“We didn’t . . . have proof. It’s still a hospital.” She coughs, clutches his arm tightly as if she’s falling. Tears start welling up threatening to spill, mixing with the drops still hitting the tile and misting across her cheeks.

“Sakura.” His voice is always so sharp, terse, but he has no arguments. Nothing he can say that makes him right. Just aware that he’s still kneeling in blood, smeared and slippery on the tile and counter and still in her clothes, soaked into the skin of both of them. The hospital, what did they leave there in the aftermath?

Every hair stands on end, the millisecond before a lightening strike. 

And there they are—one, two, three pairs of boots on the threshold, and in an instantaneous moment he knows they are friendly, though panicked. But with her like this, and him not being able to defend anyone or leave the village gates or _be goddamn useful_ in any way, he’s brimming with unchecked rage.

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto’s voice echoes in the space, an assault on the senses. He pulls up short at the sight of the blood, stops abruptly in front of Ino, who elbows her way in. Crumbles like a weak face of rock at the sight.

“It’s not hers?” He stands, bringing himself to full, towering height and it’s a way to intimidate, it’s wrong of him to do and he knows it, wrong to do to Ino who had to make a nimble decision on a lack of information. He wants someone to feel as powerless and wrong-footed as he does. Steps forward. “That’s what you said.”

“I’m sorry,” she starts. Draws herself up too. His anger, she knows, can bring people to their knees. “It happened so fast. We didn’t know who to trust, it was complete chaos.”

A weak, soft call. Ino sees Sakura lying in the shower and brushes past him, cold and brisk like a biting breeze. Her demeanor changes as soon as she reaches her, kneeling and touching her here and there, but her hand is shaking. Lets Sakura guide her to the messy, bloody hole in her side. Sounds of frustration, hurt, apology, all muddling together as Shikamaru grabs Naruto’s collar and pulls him back, glares at Sasuke to follow and dares him to argue.

In the half-light of the hallway, everything starts to spill over.

“Eh, Sasuke, w-where’s all that blood from?”

“Wound, obviously,” he spits, rounding on Naruto, right up in this face. “She has a concussion, too. What the fuck happened? Where were you?”

“Oi, Sasuke—”

“You too!”

“I’ll explain.” Shikamaru breathes in, out, once. Measured. “If you calm down.”

Sasuke lets out a grim, mirthless sound in the ghost of a laugh, hands curling into fists and fingernails digging deep into bloody palms. It’s all so ridiculous and surreal. Eyes flashing, gives Shikamaru his full attention, choking back another hysterical, dark sound.

“There was a large mission, a coordinated effort. I wasn’t involved, and in hindsight, why wasn’t I, right? Every time I tried to find information on it in files, it’s like it didn’t exist. Then they come back, all of them hurt, many dead. I wonder now if they snuck in their own men under the guise of dead ones. I don’t know. Decided to go the hospital and find the Hokage myself, I was there when everything went sideways. Ino and I – we found each other, somehow. She could only tell me so much, that there was a spy or a traitor or who knows what, it was all in chaos, patients and people disguised as patients, that I needed to find Tsunade, and that Sakura needed to get out without being picked up by the police unit. Or worse.”

Low whispers echo from the bathroom, Sakura’s words still slurring at the edges.

“I don’t believe in much, but it all aligned. I was able to find you, send you in to get her. I knew you’d protect her at all costs. And she would go with you, if you showed up.”

They hear what he isn’t saying; that Sakura would disobey almost anyone else to protect her patients.

“Where’s Kaka-sensei?” Naruto’s voice is angry, emotional in the gloom.

“Out on his own mission. Which I’m sure is on purpose,” Shikamaru says. Toying with the cigarette in his front pocket, the need sitting so close. “The more I have time to think, the more this seems planned, deliberate.”

“So what do we _do_?” Naruto demands, punching his closed fist into his opposite palm, punctuating the point. Vibrating with anger and uncapped energy, a visualization of how Sasuke feels, the need to break something and throttle it, make it talk. Break it.

“Right now, nothing. Sakura needs to stay low. Someone needs to be with her because if I were the enemy, this would be a perfect time to bring her in for questioning, which cannot happen.”

Shikamaru sighs, flicks the cigarette from his pocket and mumbles an apology to no one. Lights it, inhales. Lets his lungs feed on it, desperately and exhales his panic fear, in a manner that gives the impression he’s aged in that moment, gained some wisdom along the way.

Sasuke gives him a second’s peace. “Nothing. We have to sit by and do nothing.”

“Yes. Sasuke, if you’re taken out of the game, you’re only helping them. We’re getting you back in. For the sake of the village and its defense, you’re indispensable, and dangerous.” The sour taste of Sasuke’s defection lingers, however scant, in Shikamaru’s words. “It means you have to play the game. No matter what.”

All three turn at the noise: Sakura’s feet dragging a little over the threshold, being supported by Ino. The wound in her side covered and bandaged, neatly with nothing out of place, bruises blossoming, radiating like purple flowers on her arm, underneath her eye. Blood still flecked here and there, patterned and paired with the awful colors on Ino’s coat. Meets Sasuke’s gaze; her eyes cut askance as she looks away and says, “That nurse. She’s dead.”

Ino winces at the words, flat and matter of fact.

“She was probably being controlled. Already long dead, being used for the enemy,” she continues, still in the same bland tone.

A moment of silence that no one consciously agreed upon. It fills the space. Each of them frozen in their stances; Naruto with clenched fists, head twisted away to hide furious tears. Shikamaru, staring somewhere into space, orange ashes eating the cigarette away, one arm folded on the other. Ino’s eyes nearly closed, turning and resting her chin on Sakura’s head. Sasuke, fists still clenched, wondering what the final moments of life feel like when someone inhabits your head and takes away the last thing that a shinobi has control over, the terror of your body not being your own. To not even have the option to choose death. Something ripples underneath all of that; what had the two women in front of him gone through that they held one another so delicately, so different than what remembered before he had left.

He’s missed these changes; he’s squandered time.

Some days it’s an indescribable blankness, syncope stretching across the universe and devouring his insides.

Ino clears her throat. “She does have a concussion.” Sakura sighs, an _I’m right here_ coming through without needing to voice it. Not wanting to be treated like a patient, or hear her guilt. “I can be back in the morning, but I need to find Tsunade-sama.”

Sasuke steps forward to replace Ino as the pillar, and feeling Sakura’s warm body slide into his grasp is a relief. Heart beating. Pallor, stronger. Naruto comes forward too, eyes drawn to Sakura’s bandaged side, and he reaches out to it, as if it’s beckoning. Looks frightened, distraught.

Sakura puts her free arm around Naruto, bringing him into the fold. With a quiet sigh against his messy blonde locks, she says, “I’m fine, Naruto. I’ll be fine.”

Sasuke hears it in her voice. The careful, delicate lies she’s so good at using, even with him, with Ino, with everyone. He can feel the others watching, and perhaps they know it too.

Fabled, dominating, terrifying shinobi, legends in the public conscious, living fragile lives of hurt and desperation.

They break apart at Ino’s voice. “She can sleep, but you need to wake her up every couple of hours.” She’s staring right at Sasuke, tired and worried. Eyes searching him for something. He nods, once.

“Naruto.” Sasuke’s voice commands his attention, and he holds his gaze firmly, without remorse. “Go.”

Naruto smiles, giving him a fierce thumbs up. “Did you think I’d leave it all to these two? Wait ‘til I get my hands on ‘em.”

As they each file past, back down the stairs and out into the night, they leave him with quiet touches. Ino squeezes Sasuke’s arm. Naruto elbows him, talking big again, ready to pounce and get into a scuffle, to defend his team’s honor. Shikamaru pauses, in the way he does, orange embers at the end of his cigarette still bright in the dark space, and in the end, takes the chance on squeezing his shoulder, eyes fixed ahead on what they’ll have to do next. He says nothing, and nothing is necessary.

And then they’re alone, clinging to one another in the suffocating space. The darkness so deep and clawing, and they’re the aberration, the aperture opening up in an endless stretch of time. Fingers clinging to the back of his shirt, and his hands are on her face again and his forehead against hers again, like if he lets go she’ll drown in the sinkhole that he is, in his weaknesses. Both breathing like there’s no air, as if this is the last of it they’ll ever receive. Somehow this is where they exist best, in the spaces among the stars where no one can hear them or prove their words materialized at all.

_I’m so tired, I’m so sorry—_

_I’ll find them, every single one of them—_

Muffled words, strings of syllables drifting like dust.

Down the dark hallway, her energy ebbing away and letting him take on her weight, still so light even with the burden of war weighing heavily in her bones, the sorrow of which he can’t relieve her. All these questions he has, why did you have to do this, why did you have to follow us into the dark, why do you have to be hurt like this, _if I’d never left, none of this would’ve happened._ Though they know, in tandem, that they couldn’t exist like this if the journey had been even a slight deviation, if they hadn’t walked it in exactly the way that they already had.

The soft tones continue as pieces of them fall away; his vest, her boots. He removes them one at a time, gently, does the work for the both of them, methodical, measured, all he can think of to give. Layers peeled away, each one revealing a part of her he’s seen but not truly held. Bruises and scars and all of the seconds of her existence he’s left to others and pretended he spurned, like they’ve never crossed his mind. He’s kneeling, still working on her boots, deftly removing every wrapping holding her in, paring every thin, errant layer away as he avoids her eyes, as her spine curls again in that delicate way and her head falls against his. Words dancing between them like the notes of an instrument, like an arcane language.

_I killed him._

_You did what you had to do._

_The nurse is my fault, too._

He has nothing to say in response; some words and comfort go beyond his abilities. She tugs at her chest bindings, pulls them away from her ribcage, dried blood caked in the divots left behind. Even in this horrible place, in the awful darkness that shinobi sit in to ruminate, his lips meet her collarbone, beautiful, porcelain, fragile bends, as his hands unwind her until there’s nothing left but skin.

_What are we? How can we call ourselves good?_

Kisses her neck deeply, a rough hand splayed between her shoulder blades; exhaustion and pain leave her lovely, craving and unencumbered, and she succumbs, her moaning unfettered, a different sort of wound. He’s a weak man, obsessed with her sound.

_I feel like a monster, Sasuke-kun._

Hours and hours of secrets lost to the silence of twilight, things not meant for daylight’s ears. Hollowed out and empty, occupying the space between fitful sleep and nightmarish dreams. Staring out at the light yearning over the horizon, curled on her side. Him, sitting next to her prone figure. Suspended, hard in the way of stone, fingers around her ankle like she’ll sink into nothing and disappear.

Bloody from his own mission and the rush home, Kakashi stands in the doorway, and this is how he finds them.

Ragged, ashen and bloodless in the dawn. 


End file.
